Slashdot Mirror
Novelist Blames Piracy On Open Source Culture
joeflies writes "CNN published an article entitled 'Digital Piracy Hits the e-Book Industry.' It quotes the following statement by novelist Sherman Alexie: 'With the open-source culture on the Internet, the idea of ownership — of artistic ownership — goes away. It terrifies me.'"
The article also points out a couple of interesting statistics for a "slumping" industry beset by piracy: "Sales for digital books in the second quarter of 2009 totaled almost $37 million. That's more than three times the total for the same three months in 2008, according to the Association of American Publishers," and "consumers who purchase an e-reader buy more books than those who stick with traditional bound volumes. Amazon reports that Kindle owners buy, on average, 3.1 times as many books on the site as other customers."
The quoted novelist appears to have used an unfortunate choice of words - he probably means "non-respecting-of-intellectual-property culture" rather than "open-source culture". The distinction is obvious to most slashdot readers, but presumably not to this novelist. The quote does not indicate that he has any problems with open-source software, I would imagine that his complaint is more about sites like Pirate Bay than Google.
As an example of this, last time I bought a hardbound Honor Harrington novel, a CD was included with electronic copies of ALL the Honor Harrington books. Very nice, wish more publishers than Baen would do that.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
"Sooner or later we will have to consider, as a culture, what to do if established authors, and promising young authors, decide to abandon writing because too many freeloaders reduce author profits below subsistence."
Except that will not happen. Stephen King already demonstrated a tactic for turning a profit on eBooks: serial releases. Perhaps some day, instead of releasing entire novels, authors will release single chapters, wait until enough people have paid, and then release the next chapter, and so forth, until the entire novel is complete. The "publishing industry" may come to mean systems that automate this process, perhaps even online communities where readers not only pay authors but also communicate with the authors and with each other, commenting about the stories and characters.
Of course, that is not the picture that the current publishing industry wishes to paint, since it means the demise of their current business model and way of life. They will tell us that unless they continue to yield growing profits, authors will not write anything and we will be left without great novels to read, textbooks to study, or any number of other printed media.
"But what about the harm to books and to the confidence of new authors happening RIGHT NOW.... what do we do BEFORE we have a system of direct compensation in place?"
Educate new authors about direct compensation, discuss what Stephen King tried, and start building those direct compensation systems and online communities for authors and their fans. Such communities already exist for illegal books, missing only the payment component, so I think it is fair to assume that a community for legal books, complete with a payment system, would be successful. All that is needed is for a few great authors to try it out, to release good stories that people will pay to have revealed, and new authors will start trying it for themselves. We already have the technology necessary to start building such communities, it just has not been combined into a coherent system yet.
Palm trees and 8
What makes you say that people aren't willing to pay for books, music and films?
Yes, e-books are gaining popularity now that the technology is becoming more portable and easier. This just means that it is easier for some/most people than carrying around/keeping shelves worth of books (compare how much space a season of TV takes up when comparing VHS and DVD).
Yes, because it is digital it is easier to copy. But what about the people scanning print books to create digital versions of them (legitimately for out of copyright works on sites like guttenberg, or illegally)?
Pirates will be pirates.
You say how do people make their money, but lets think about this...
* 2009 is the first time that films in cinemas have grossed over $10 billion!
* 2008's The Dark Knight made over $500 million in the US and over $1 billion worldwide. [1]
* Avatar has the second biggest opening week performance, below The Dark Knight, and is well set to becoming the 5th film to earn over $1 billion worldwide (Titanic [1997], Lord of * the Rings: Return of the King [2003], Pirates of the Carribean: Dead Man's Chest [2006], The Dark Knight [2008]) -- all when piracy is supposed to be killing the movie industry. [1]
* Then there are runaway indie hits like Paranormal Activity ($107 miilion for a $15 thousand budget!) [3]
For music and books, i don't know what the figures are, but:
* Nine Inch Nails released an album for $4 or $5 (with limited edition versions for a lot more that sold out very quickly) and as a thank you released an album for free under the creative commons license, giving you permission to rework and remix it how you want
* Sandie Thom's career was launched via a webcast
* Various artists (such as Helen Austen, Poko Lambro and Lizzie Hibbert) are using YouTube and MySpace to help promote themselves as well as performing in pubs and bars, allowing them to gain a wider fan base
* The internet and the digital age are helping authors and musicians reach a wider audience (I like a lot of German music artists) -- especially new and upcoming authors and artists (I read quite a bit of internet fiction and buy some of their work where possible as a thank you)
* Self-publishing sites such as lulu.com are helping would-be authors publish their own work
The digital book formats are helping would-be authors publish their own works.
As for advertising, why would I want to have that take up space on a website I am viewing, be forced to watch it on the DVDs I own or have to be interrupted while watching a TV program or film with annoying adverts (Sheila's Wheels, anyone!). If the solution is to put advertising in the middle of electronic books for any of the new books from major publishers, then count me out (same with DRM).
And before you ask, I buy CDs, DVDs and books (but will be buying more electronic books in the future).
[1] http://www.the-numbers.com/movies/records/#alltime
[2] http://www.movienewsmovietrailers.com/hollywood-breaks-box-office-records-in-2009/90348
[3] http://boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=paranormalactivity.htm
How often do you see the net total adjusted for the current economic situation? Are the book markets actually loosing money?
On a related topic Charles Arthur tried to go through various numbers and statistic as related to music piracy in this article on The Guardian's site.
The first clue of where all those downloaders are really spending their money came in searching for games statistics: year after year ELSPA had hailed "a record year". In fact if you look at the graph above, you'll see that games spend has risen dramatically - from £1.18bn in 1999 to £4.03bn in 2008.
Meanwhile music spending (allowing for that * of adjustment in 2004 onwards) has gone from £1.94bn to £1.31bn.
DVD sales and rentals, meanwhile, have nearly doubled, from a total of £1.286bn in 1999 to £2.56bn in 2008.
If we assume that there's roughly the same amount of discretionary spending available (which, even allowing for the credit bubble, should be roughly true; most of the credit went into houses), then it's clear who the culprit is: the games industry. By 2009, the amount spent in games and music is almost exactly the same as 1999 (though note that the music industry changed its methods from 2004).
Link to graph refered to.
The Long Now Foundation